Thursday, 23 August 2012

With my (second)
stag do approaching [golf weekend], and stocks of the Caol Ila Cask Strength
running low, last week I decided it was time to pick up a new special whisky. Having
acquired £20 in Sainsburys vouchers, and knowing that I’d be passing a
Sainsburys on my way home from a trip to the dentist, I figured I’d call in,
and see what they had.

On a previous
browsing, I’d noticed the Black Grouse at £17.99. It’s from the Famous Grouse
family, and it’s a blend, but my 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die guide
marked it out as… a whisky to try before you die. That’s sure to be special,
I thought, and after having a cursory browse of Sainsburys’ wares anyway, that
was what I opted for.

Could this bottle explain why brandy isn't seen as cool?

Now, I should have
known better, but I let myself get a bit excited. I know, but it had been at
least a month since I’d allowed myself to buy any hard liquor – possibly even
two (though Brenda had brought me a litre bottle of St Remy brandy back from
Paris, and her mother had brought me a 75cl bottle of Windsor Canadian whisky
from Canada in that time… and come to think of it, I bought that Grappa Julia
Superiore on the eve of my previous stag do…) – but the thought of it certainly
brightened up my day.

It was a very hot
day, so after I’d stashed the bottle of Black Grouse in my rucksack, I headed
for the exit, and decided to take my jacket off and carry it home in one of the
straps of the bag – while still wearing the bag, I might add. I really
should have been more careful because when it got to the point that I needed to
take my arm out of the sleeve, the short tug caused me to drop the bag on the
floor – I still hadn’t gotten outside the door.

My immediate thought
was, that’ll be all right, but as soon as I picked the bag up, I could
see there was whisky leaking out of it – loads of spots like when you get a bad
nosebleed.

It’s funny, the
thought processes you go through in these situations. Your brain quickly scans
the possible courses of action. Obviously though, there weren’t any. There was
no way of saving the precious whisky, and there was no way I was going right
back inside to buy another one. The only positive aspect of the situation was
that, as I’d exited to the back of the store, there was no one around to see my
calamity. It even crossed my mind to try and get a taste before it had gone
completely – by sucking the wet fabric of the bag or something – but I knew the
disaster had taken away any pleasure a sip of whisky could possibly bring, and
that bag has seen the floor of a fair few Manchester buses in its time, so I
left it alone.

I looked around for
a bin, and there wasn’t one so - I’m not proud of it but I had to go to a
particularly secluded bit of ground nearby and dump the box containing the
broken bottle. I commenced the long walk home, upset and smelling of whisky.

I’d texted my best
man Phil beforehand that I was just picking up something special, as he was
coming over for part two of my stag later that week. Less than 5 minutes later,
and I was texting back that I’d dropped the bastard. I also felt I needed to
express my sorrow to Brenda, who I called just as she was about to leave for
her step class.

It took me the whole
evening to get over it. It was less than £20, and it wasn’t even my money,
but for some reason that made it worse. I’d been looking forward to spending
that free money, and fate had laughed in my stupid face.

I couldn’t even have
a drink that night. Some might drink to drown their sorrows, but I drink for
pleasure, and the thought of drinking something just made me sad. [sob]…
what might have been, I would have thought.

It was pathetic
really, but Brenda indulged me, and bought me a replacement bottle with her own
money a couple of days later – despite my protestations, I might add. I had a
feeling Phil might be intending to do the same, so I told him, and he said that
had been his intention. He bought a new driver for the golf weekend instead –
and that was a good move, because he scored pretty well.

All of this brings
me to my impressions of the Black Grouse. As I said before, it is included
amongst 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die, so expectations were fairly
high. It is described as being in the Islay style, so should suit me right down
to the ground, and reviews on the Whisky Exchange are mostly favourable, with
some comparing it to the single malt, Tallisker.

Plastic bottle - like mouthwash, only better

Now, I have had a
bottle of Tallisker before, back when I was new to whisky, and it didn’t float
my boat. Unfortunately the Black Grouse doesn’t strike me as particularly
special either. On the Thursday night when Phil came round, I started him with
a glass of Windsor Canadian, then a Grant’s and then a Caol Ila before cracking
open the Black Grouse. Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to try a new blend
(after the smooth sweetness of the Windsor and the peaty richness of the super
strength Caol Ila), but I’d say we were both somewhat underwhelmed. Rather than
try another glass, Phil actually requested more of the Windsor Canadian.

I decided it would
take a few more tastings to appraise the Black Grouse fully, but a few days and
a few more appraisals later, and I’m no nearer enjoying it. I can just barely
taste the peat, and the flavour isn’t very complex. What lingers is that
bitterness that so far seems to me to be what gives a cheap blend away.

One of the reviews
on the Whisky Exchange spoke of pouring it over an ice cube and then
leaving it for half an hour. That seemed like a good idea to me, and I’d like
to say that it opened the whisky up a little, but it still doesn’t have the
complexity and richness that my favourite whiskies have. It cost £18, and it
tastes like £18 of whisky. What more can you expect, really?

There is of course,
still much tasting and experimenting to go, with over half a bottle remaining –
I’ll definitely try adding a couple of drops of water, but can’t really see
the point when it’s only 40% ABV anyway. Sadly, it hasn’t filled the position
of ‘special whisky’ that it was intended for, but I still have a bit of the
Caol Ila left, and I’ll be able to hit the Duty Free in Ibiza in less than four
weeks, so hopefully that will turn up a gem.

Well, that may be
all from me for a few weeks. I have got a few posts that are ready to go, but
I’m not sure I’m going to have time to post them. I’ll be busy finishing up
wedding arrangements, getting married and then going on honeymoon. I think all
that should give me enough material to last the rest of the year, so I promise
I’ll be back in September and I’ll at least try to get one more post in
before then. I suppose summer will be over by that time (the leaves are already
falling off the trees in Levenshulme), so make sure you eke as much pleasure as
you can out of what’s left of it. It’ll be Christmas before you know it.

Friday, 10 August 2012

No Paul, I haven’t
forgotten about the challenge you set me a few weeks ago, I just had other
things I was excited about, and wanted to write about them first - and I was
exploring that cask strength Caol Ila. Thanks for the request though.

For those readers
who don’t remember, Paul has come into possession of a big bottle of tequila,
and wondered if there are any simple drinks that he could use it for. He likes
the Tequila Sunrise and Margarita, but feels they are just a bit too much
trouble sometimes. I know what he means. Tequila Sunrise isn’t that difficult,
but sometimes you just don’t want to get the cocktail shaker and the measuring
cup out. You just want to stick some booze and a mixer over ice, and sit there
enjoying it.

The thing about
tequila is that it doesn’t come with a standard companion – you know, with the
other strong liquors you have something that goes with it, almost to the extent
that it’s a drink in its own right. You have rum and coke, gin and tonic, vodka
and orange, even whisky and coke. But what do you have for tequila? Everyone seems
to think you have to go through that whole rigmarole of biting a lemon
wedge and licking salt, but why can’t we just enjoy tequila in a simple way,
instead of having to act like you’re at a student party?

Well, we can, and
there is one combination that comes to mind straight away that will do the job;
tequila and lime. I’m a big fan of lime, and just adding the juice of half a
lime (or 1 measure of lime juice) to a glass of tequila should produce the
desired effect. Paul was unlikely to be satisfied with that alone though, so a
little experimentation was called for. Until my Jose Cuervo Gold ran out - or
longer if my financial situation improved, and there was sufficient spare funds
to buy another bottle of tequila (along with all my other booze requirements) -
I would be adding every soft drink I could find to a glass of tequila, and
trying to determine if they were natural partners. Ay, ay, ay!

I did start by having
a look in my various cocktail books to see if there was any singular ingredient
that marries with tequila on a frequent basis, but that wasn’t leading me
anywhere fast, and I decided it was time for some visceral experience. The only
soft drink we had at home was a carton of pineapple juice that I’d had for a
couple of months. I hadn’t opened it yet, but it was good until some time next
year, so we may as well start there…

Tequila and
pineapple juice – No! It
doesn’t work. It’s just confusing, like if you brush your teeth and then
immediately drink a glass of orange juice.

Tequila and lemon
juice – a decent
combination, but you don’t want to overdo the lemon juice. I did (adding a
whole measure, to two measures of tequila), but I was able to rescue it by
adding half a teaspoon of sugar syrup. Since lemon juice is such a powerful
flavour, you’re not going to get a very big drink, but it’s a good fall back if
you need it.

Tequila and
cranberry juice – strong
flavours battling it out here. It doesn’t taste bad, it’s just confusing. The
taste of the tequila just about comes out on top, and overall it suggests that
tequila doesn’t tend to mix too well – which is probably why it doesn’t have a
natural partner.

Tequila and
lemonade – I used the
bottled, fizzy kind here and there isn’t really anything to report. The search
continues.

Tequila and
orange – it should really
have been obvious that this one would work. It’s most of a Tequila Sunrise. The
only thing missing is the grenadine, and in the Tequila Sunrise, that just sits
at the bottom, so you’re drinking a lot of tequila and orange juice along the
way. I’m going to stick out my neck a bit here, and say this is actually quite
a complex (but complementary) flavour combination. Also, I don’t know if I’m
just being daft, but there were elements of the taste that reminded me of a nice
single malt.

Tequila and apple
– it’s not that this tastes
bad, it just doesn’t work. There’s something odd about it.

Tequila and tonic
– not as successful as the
vodka and tonic or gin and tonic, but if you did ever find yourself in an
unlikely situation where all you had was a bottle of tequila and a bottle of
Indian Tonic Water (like maybe if you’re stranded in deep space, and you’ve
already drunk all the Pimms), you can rest easy knowing that you can mix
these together. (I don’t even know what Pimms is, but I’m sure there will be a
post on it sooner or later.)

Tequila and coke – not complementary of each other, I’m
afraid.

-

There you go, Paul.
Hopefully you can find something in amongst all that lot. I could go on, but
there are probably more types of juice and soft drink than there are spirits,
so I’d have to start a soft drink blog if I was going to try them all. I’m not
going to do that – cheaper though it would be, but I am going to leave it open
to you lot. Let us know if there is anything you like to mix your tequila with.
Keep it simple though.

If you’re not happy
to stick with tequila and orange or tequila and lime, I do have some
suggestions for other things you can do with that bottle.

Give the bottle to me.

Take it out with you in a hip flask.

Use it just for taking big swigs to warm up before going out in the
evening.

Just hang on to it for when you can be bothered to make a
Tequila Sunrise or Margarita. People say that spirits will eventually go
stale in the bottle (once it’s been opened and the spirit therefore
exposed to air), but I’ve never noticed any evidence of that. I had one
bottle of brandy for about four years, and I never noticed any discernible
difference in flavour.

Give the bottle to me – it’s the least you can do after I used all
of my bottle trying combinations that didn’t work. Actually I didn’t use
all of it, and I enjoyed the research, so thanks for that.

If you have any
other things you’d like me to try before you waste your own liquor on it, or
even if you just have any questions you think I might be able to help with,
feel free to let me know.

Friday, 3 August 2012

The cost of the four
holidays I had last year is catching up with me, and I have some big expenses
coming up – home insurance and the like – so the austerity measures are hitting
pretty hard around here. Not the government’s austerity measures; my own.
There’ll be no spending with reckless abandon for a while – except for the stag
do, the second stag do and the honeymoon, where I’m looking forward to hitting
the Duty Free - but facilitating those is a large part of what these measures
are aimed at, so things aren’t all bad.

Still, a man needs
some short term things to look forward to, so I went to work last week with £20
in my wallet, and I told myself, if I had enough left at the end of the week
out of that £20, I would allow myself to buy that cheap bottle of grappa that
they have at Tesco. So I needed to have £13 left. If you budget for 5 a side at
£6.20, that would leave 80p. So there was to be no chocolate and crisps
whenever I got hungry, no bacon and sausage barm first thing on Friday morning,
and definitely no takeaway pizza for lunch. It was going to be hard, but these
travails make us stronger.

Enough about my
financial strait jacket, what about the grappa? Well, yes, of course I made
sure that I had £13 left at the end of the week. The carrot and stick approach
worked very well. How good though, could a bottle of grappa at £13 possibly be?
Obviously I wasn’t expecting it to live up to the standard set by the Domenis
Storica that I bought in Venice last year, but retailing at £45-50 in the UK,
that one is a little beyond my every day means if I want a nice glass of an
evening. If Tesco’s product is even half as good it would be a bargain
and a potential new favourite.

The budget brand in
this case is Grappa Julia Superiore. It’s the only grappa available in
Tesco, and I haven’t seen any other grappas in other supermarkets, so I
assumed it would be the equivalent of Bells whisky. Nevertheless, my burgeoning
interest in grappa is such that I had to try it.

It has an ABV of
38%, so it is budget standard in that area (the Domenis Storica was an
impressive 50%), but in the bottle it looks the part - it’s an interesting
shape, and it appears to be made in Italy (as opposed to the Italian part of
Switzerland or San Marino, which are the only other places that grappa can come
from). Nowhere does it say, “bottled for Tesco”, or anything discouraging like that,
though there are descriptions on the back in French, English and German – to me
that’s not a great sign, but cool yer boots…

It’s also a full
size 70cl, whereas the Storica was a conservative 50cl. A bit of geeky maths
tells us you’re paying 18.6p per centilitre for the Julia and a massive 90p per
centilitre for the Storica. A bit more geeky maths tells us that the equivalent
quantity of Storica would cost £63 - drop for drop, that’s 5 times more
than the Julia.

The cap is screw
top, so there’s no satisfying squeak-pop on opening, but it has the right
smell, and it tastes right. It doesn’t have the lovely sweetness of the
Storica, but its (slight) bitterness isn’t overpowering or lasting. It makes a very
good first drink of the evening, and I have to say, for £13 I’m
satisfied. If I’ll ever buy this brand again, only time will tell – I’m not
sure what my grappa needs are yet, but if you do get a craving and your funds
are limited, or you’re bored of brandy like the checkout assistant at Tesco
said he was when I bought this, it would be worth your while to give this a
try.

I was explaining to
the assistant that grappa is like brandy, but made differently, and come to
think of it, if we widen our net of comparison to compare this grappa to brands
of brandy, say the Courvoisier VSOP that retails around £30, I think I much prefer
the grappa – it’s half the price, and out of all the sipping bottles I
have at the moment, it’s proving to be the every day go-to. No, it’s not
as special as the Caol Ila cask strength whisky, but it’s precisely because that’s
special that I don’t go to it every day.

The Storica was
special also, and all the more precious because of its limited quantity, so
while Julia doesn’t quite reach the heights that that one scaled, it’s
affordable to the wallet and acceptable to the palate. What more can you ask
for?

Definitions

What happens when you zone out after having had a cheeky lunchtime pint.

Alcothusiast:

Not an alcoholic, someone who appreciates booze.

Anxiety, The:

The uneasy feeling that accompanies any noteworthy hangover.

Booze Buffet Mentality:

The propensity people have to go nuts whenever there's a free bar.

Booze Porn:Photos of alcohol.

Bread Chest:Not booze related, but this term describes the indigestion you get from eating too many bread products too quickly. Just putting it out there...

Crawler's Block:The inability to decide where to go next during a pub crawl - often resulting in crawl stagnation and someone saying, "shall we just have another one here?"

Crawl Stagnation:The result of failing to plan a pub crawl sufficiently - lack of a route, theme or over-familiarity with nearby pubs can all be contributing factors.

Excess Induced Alcohol Aversion:An intolerance for a drink caused (usually) by one occasion of overindulgence.

The Family:My whisky collection.

MOMA:

Moment of Maximum Appreciation. Every bottle has one. It's the time you drink it where you enjoy it most.

Old Man Pub:Traditional British pub, renowned for being quiet, cosy and frequented by old men. Much favoured by people who like a nice chat while they drink.Psychological Drinks Cabinet:Collective term relating to the kinds of alcoholic drinks a person has need for.Road Beers:

Cans of beer that you take with you when you go out, to consume on the way.

The 3 Types of Rum:White, gold and dark. Together they form the base of many a great cocktail.

About Me

Neil Cake is interested in all types of booze, but is by no means an authority or expert. Most of the time he's just trying to be funny, but he is learning, and enjoys sharing his adventures and what he learns on the Drink it How You Like it blog.
Thengyuverrymuuuuuch.